TA TALK

Issue 22

August 2017

Spring is coming, with longer days, warmer weather, and daylight saving for some.

Importantly, September brings an opportunity to acknowledge the fabulous job done by our teacher aides. Friday 1 September is Queensland Teacher Aide Day; a day for Queensland schools to celebrate teacher aides and recognise the support they provide to both teachers and students.

We searched for other dates that teacher aides are acknowledged around Australia, and we were surprised to find that there is very little, if any, information provided by the education departments in other states. World Teacher Aide Day is celebrated by some schools in September, and others join in with World Teacher Day during the month of October.

ATA has a future vision for the education community to recognise the work and dedication of all our teacher aides in Australia on the same day. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for your chance to have your say, soon.

Read on to learn about the latest professional development resources that we have uploaded to our member resource library. Did you know that members have ongoing access to 40 videos on topics ranging from digital technology to mathematics? Our library is growing every month, and is the largest online resource library for teacher aides in Australia.

We look forward to talking with you at our next live member event on Tuesday 12 September. For states with daylight saving, please remember to check the starting time on your webinar notification.

Remember you can also contact us anytime with questions or feedback using the contact us form on our website. We love hearing from you.

Warm regards

Stella and Mandy

WHAT IS THE CPD DIARY?



The CPD (Continuing Professional Development) Diary in My Portal enables members to keep all their PD records in the one place. When members attend a live webinar, a CPD diary entry will automatically be created and one CPD point will be assigned. It is best practice to upload your completed worksheet, or notes taken during the PD event, to your CPD Diary entry to verify your participation.

Manual entries can be made to the CPD Diary after completing PD activities from our wide range of professional development. View our FAQs for instructions on how to create a CPD Diary entry.

A diary entry will also be created automatically for non-members when attending live webinars, however, the CPD Diary only becomes accessible when you become an ATA member.

All participants at live events receive a Certificate of Completion, uploaded within the week after the webinar event. You can view your certificates by logging in to the ATA site and navigating to My Portal - My Content - Certificates.

COMMUNITY WEBINAR: The Big Write and VCOP - A Fun Program to Improve Student Writing

In this webinar, you will learn about Big Write and VCOP, an oral based approach to writing, that assists students to transfer their verbal skills to written skills. VCOP stands for vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation, and is based on the idea, that in order to improve writing, we must first take away pencil and paper. “If they can’t say it, they can’t write it.” says Samantha Taylor from Andrell Education. She will show you how to engage students to write using this fast, and fun, oral based program, that is suited to most year levels. You will be able to implement many of the practical and games-based strategies presented straight away. There is a downloadable worksheet, as well as links to the resources used in this program. 

MEMBER WEBINAR: eTAPS Module 3 Preview

How to give effective feedback to students

In this member webinar, Stella explores the role of feedback on the learning process. She discusses how to teach students coping strategies and how to break the failure cycle. You will learn how motivation, self-worth and self-efficacy impact the way students go about learning, and how to support students to attribute their successes and failures to the effort they put into a task. There is a downloadable worksheet for use when participating in the online activities.

MEMBER WEBINAR: eTAPS Module 4 Preview

How to give effective feedback to teachers

Don’t miss the fourth and last preview of eTAPS when Stella shows you how to use the information from the first three previews to give effective feedback to teachers. You will learn about formative feedback, and the role of teacher aides in the assessment process. This session includes a worksheet and a Q&A session.

CELEBRATING TEACHER AIDE DAY

Friday 1st September may officially be Teacher Aide Day in Queensland, but we would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all our:

• Teacher Aides
• Learning Support Officers
• Education Aides
• Teaching Assistants
• Integration Aides
• Intervention Aides
• Teacher Assistants
• School Officers
• Education Support Staff 
• and all other TAs employed under titles we may have missed

We acknowledge the essential job you do supporting teachers and students.

CONGRATULATIONS!

PARTNER WITH ATA IN A COMMUNITY WEBINAR

Are you an educator or professional with expertise that you or your organisation would like to share with the wider education community? Do you want more people to know about the fabulous program you use, service you provide, or product you have created?

LITERACY

Have you visited the TA Toolbox lately? In the literacy toolbox, you will find links to some great resources to build student vocabulary. We particularly like the RMIT Learning Lab resources that have activities to help secondary school students learn the academic vocabulary needed for successful university studies.

Teacher aides bring the fun to learning

23,512 views

1,494 reactions, comments and shares

Of course, we know TAs bring much more than fun ... they are a key partner in the teaching team bringing many and varied skills, not least of all learning support for students. Although we shared this post just yesterday, it is outdoing all other posts for the month, so it seems that a lot of education staff, including teacher aides, agree!

Do you get the urge?

19,351 views
993 reactions, comments and shares

We've all felt it! Out on the weekend, confronted by an upset child and it's all we can do to curb the natural instinct to rush to their rescue. Luckily, in time, we remember that as much as we would like to, we cannot be everything to everyone all of the time!

HAVE YOU TALKED TO YOUR SCHOOL ABOUT ATA MEMBERSHIP?

Increasingly, we are being contacted by teacher aides, and teachers, following our community webinars asking if they can have access to the recording of the live event to share with other staff at school. Whilst, we love that we can offer our professional development via live webinars to the wider education sector most months, we also have a responsibility to our paying members to ensure they receive the ultimate experience from their membership. If you would like to have unlimited access to all of our previous webinars plus private member webinar invitations and a range of other member benefits, talk to your school leaders about corporate membership. There is no other organisation in Australia offering the range of PD that ATA offers for teacher aides. It is fantastic value and schools can link an unlimited number of staff to their membership account. Use this FLYER to start the conversation today!